Museums and galleries, try as they do to be different, generally all end up conforming to the same presentation format. Less common and usually more interesting are environments and structures developed to house and present the work of a single artist. In NYC, an often overlooked but worth visiting is the Noguchi Museum in Queens. The former factory space adjacent to Isamu Noguchi’s studio was the first such museum in the United States to be established, designed, and installed by a living artist to show their own work. It was Noguchi’s idea to combine a garden with indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces.
Opening in late September 2025 in Philadelphia is another single artist venue with a nod to what Noguchi established four decades ago. Calder Gardens presents the work of third generation sculptor Alexander Calder within a 1.8 acre garden and 18,000 sq ft gallery structure. I was invited to attend a press preview tour of the garden and galleries and it’s be a must visit for art, architecture and horticulture devotees.
The sloping landscape is the work of Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, NYC’s High Line are among his credits. Being a newly planted plot, the garden lacks the drama it will likely have in coming years. Still, there is a small preview of Oudolf’s signature clusters of perennials and grasses with some late summer orange and violet blooms.
The site’s compact spacial area is visually extended by the main facade of the building, designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. Spanning nearly the entire length of the site, the structure is clad with satin finish metal panels that create a soft reflection of the surrounding landscape and a fuzzy depth of field effect. The monolithic elevation has only one window and a wood clad entry portal. I think this is a smart choice to have the structure disappear and let the garden get primary attention. It’ll be a job to keep that paneling clean though and hopefully it won’t create an problem with bird strikes.
Hemlock timbers clad the entrance vestibule and adjacent small shop. All the gallery spaces are subterranean accessed down stars connected to theater seating benches. From a landing there’s a view to a few of the gallery spaces below. Getting there is via a blackened stairway enclosed by rough shotcrete. The jagged arched ceiling and curving walls give the feeling of a literal underground tunnel. Concrete is used extensively as a finish material in the interior. There’s board formed walls, polished ceilings and floors, and sculpted wall recesses that form seating. Combined with the hemlock wood and typical painted drywall, it’s a material palette that doesn’t compete with Calder’s vibrant colors or graphic monochrome.
The central Open Plan Gallery housing Calder’s red Jerusalem Stabile II (1976) is the convergence point for all the other indoor and outdoor galleries. There’s really only one typical boxy gallery with all the others being irregular shaped or curved. The entire interior is not that big but the layout offers a sense of a journey from space to space.
This is most apparent getting to the outdoor Vestige Garden, accessed by a vestibule angled just enough to induce the feeling of a change in direction. Through a second door is the Quasi Gallery, an indoor/outdoor space with a low perimeter bulkhead that obstructs the view out. A few more steps and the space opens up to to the sky and tall perimeter walls that will eventually become a vertical garden. All these different changes in environments compacted into a ten foot walk.
Overall, the interior has enough architectural interest to make it distinctive without grandstanding Calder’s work. It’s going to take a few years for the garden portion of the project to really fill in and resemble something like Herzog’s concept renderings.
If you’re also thinking what I’m was, wouldn’t this be an amazing location to show Calder’s BMW art car? Sadly I asked a member of the staff and the freight elevator isn’t large enough to hold a car. Some of Calder’s larger works on display needed to be transported in pieces and reassembled inside each gallery.
Photos and Text: Dave Pinter
